Fabric Journal: Lesson 1

 Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Now that you know what the course is about and you have your materials list, it's time to make some decisions. These decisions will help you collect the materials you'll need to make the journal that you want to make -- one that is personal to you. 

This video will take you through those decisions:

Design Decisions

You have been sent the instructions for Making a Fabric Journal by email.  If you have misplaced the document, a copy can be found here.

Making a Fabric Journal

Making Your Page Spreads

It is always best to work on pre-washed fabric. This will prevent your fabric from shrinking when you tea stain, dye or in any other way add colour to it.  When you tear or cut your page spreads to the size you would like them to be, it's nice when they stay that size after colour has been applied.  Some fabrics, unbleached cotton being one of them, can shrink significantly when hot water is used when applying colour in the form of tea stain or dye. 

I usually tear my fabric into strips of the page height I want and then tear or cut into the width for the double page spread.  Since I know I am going to be working with raw edges, the torn edge is fine for me.  You can prepare your pages in whatever manner you wish.  Just remember,  if you plan on finishing your edges you will need to adjust for a seam allowance in the dimensions of your page before cutting or tearing.

Prepare enough fabric so that you have enough for a front and back for each double page spread that you want to complete.  That will give you 4 pages. You should always have an even number of pieces of material.  If you want 20 pages for example, that would be 5 double page spreads which would mean 10 fronts and 10 backs that would eventually be fused together. 

Extras

For my Shabby Chic fabric journal I decided that I was going to put my pages into signatures with 4 sheets each.  Since my unbleached cotton muslin was very fine this time and I was not planning to fuse front and backs together but work on a single piece of cloth and let the stitching show through, I decided to give more body to the fabric by coating both sides with white gesso. The coverage would be thin and it didn't have to be complete because I would be adding fabric, paper, lace and other ephemera to the page before the journal was complete. 

Below is a video of the page preparation.

Preparing Shabby Chic Fabric Journal Pages with Gesso